Old Age Quotes

The cancer set into her bones and whittled her down to nothing. The weariness of the world and the weight in her heart laid her to rest in January.

~ Rachel Autumn Deering

I don't see why there should be a point where everyone decides you're too old. I'm not too old, and until I decide I'm too old I'll never be too fucking old.

~ Lemmy Kilmister

I'm growing fonder of my staff; I'm growing dimmer in my eyes; I'm growing fainter in my laugh; I'm growing deeper in my sighs; I'm growing careless of my dress; I'm growing frugal of my gold; I'm growing wise; I'm growing--yes,-- I'm growing old.

~ John Godfrey Saxe

I Didn't Ask to Be a Senior Citizen (I Was Drafted)

~ Doug Jensen

[O]ver the years I travelled to another universe. However alert we are, however much we think we know what will happen, antiquity remains an unknown, unanticipated galaxy. It is alien, and old people are a separate form of life. They have green skin, with two heads that sprout antennae. They can be pleasant, they can be annoying--in the supermarket, these old ladies won't get out of my way--but most important they are permanently other. When we turn eighty, we understand that we are extraterrestrial. If we forget for a moment that we are old, we are reminded when we try to stand up, or when we encounter someone young, who appears to observe green skin, extra heads, and protuberances.

~ Donald Hall

Old age robs you of every last illusion, even the belief in your own goodness.

~ Jill Ciment

Il arrive un âge où ils ne sont plus séduisants, ni «en forme», comme on dit. Ils ne peuvent plus boire et ils pensent encore aux femmes; seulement ils sont obligés de les payer, d'accepter des quantités de petites compromissions pour échapper à leur solitude. Ils sont bernés, malheureux. C'est ce moment qu'ils choisissent pour devenir sentimentaux et exigeants… J'en ai vu beaucoup devenir ainsi des sortes d'épaves. A time comes when they are no longer attractive or in good form. They can't drink any more, and they still hanker after women, only then they have to pay and make compromises in order to escape from their loneliness: they have become just figures of fun. They grow sentimental and hard to please. I haveseen many who have gone the same way.

~ Françoise Sagan

Let us cherish and love old age; for it is full of pleasure if one knows how to use it. Fruits are most welcome when almost over; youth is most charming at its close; the last drink delights the toper, the glass which souses him and puts the finishing touch on his drunkenness. Each pleasure reserves to the end the greatest delights which it contains. Life is most delightful when it is on the downward slope, but has not yet reached the abrupt decline.

~ Seneca

Old age is the most unexpected of all the things that can happen to a man.

~ Leon Trotsky

Old age. I don't know when it really starts, and I'm not interested in finding out. Julia pretty much ignored the whole thing, and that may be the only real lesson there is for the end of our days. Just pretend like it isn't happening, until you have no choice but to accept reality. If you're lucky, like Julia, you'll die peacefully in your sleep after having enjoyed a dinner of onion soup.

~ Karen Karbo

I am a fading phantasmagoria. Time has left me in partial glory.--Fidelis O Mkparu

~ Fidelis O. Mkparu

Getting older comes with abilities. Being old comes with disabilities.

~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

The only things that old age comes standard with: grey hair and wrinkles. Wisdom and intellect are earned.

~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

To flatter a young man, tell him that you thought that he was older than he is. To flatter an old woman, tell her that you thought that she was younger than she is.

~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Old age saves us from the realization of a great many fears.

~ Graham Greene

Time erodes people, and when you are old enough you weigh nothing. It's comforting to know that I will never be as frail.

~ Maija Haavisto

Oh, once you’ve been initiated into the Elderly, the world doesn’t want you back.” Veronica settled herself in a rattan chair and adjusted her hat just so. “We—by whom I mean anyone over sixty—commit two offenses just by existing. One is Lack of Velocity. We drive too slowly, walk too slowly, talk too slowly. The world will do business with dictators, perverts, and drug barons of all stripes, but being slowed down it cannot abide. Our second offence is being Everyman’s memento mori. The world can only get comfy in shiny-eyed denial if we are out of sight.

~ David Mitchell

Old people die not because no one cared for them but because someone they expected care from did not bother.

~ Vipin Behari Goyal

She was crude, but loyal. He began to understand her even better than before. A pity she was so old; it was too late to try to make a human being of her.

~ Elias Canetti

Now, it’s time for me to lock up and go. Listen to me. Lock up an empty building that’s gonna be torn down. Makes no sense. Like an old man tellin’ a lie to his son from his death bed. What’s the point? Who besides yourself are you fooling?

~ Dan Groat

Left alone, Miss Verney felt so old, lonely and helpless that she began to cry. No builder would tackle that shed, not for any price she could afford. But crying relieved her and she soon felt quite cheerful again. It was ridiculous to brood, she told herself.

~ Jean Rhys

Older age has taught one crucial lesson about life. It has taught me that regardless of where I've been I still have much to see and despite every fall I still haven't experienced it all.

~ Sinister Publications

No matter who you were in sixteenth-century Europe, you could be sure of two things: you would be lucky to reach fifty years of age, and you could expect a life of discomfort and pain. Old age tires the body by thirty-five, Erasmus lamented, but half the population did not live beyond the age of twenty. There were doctors and there was medicine, but there does not seem to have been a great deal of healing. Anyone who could afford to seek a doctor's aid did so eagerly, but the doctor was as likely to maim or kill as to cure. His potions were usually noxious and sometimes fatal—but they could not have been as terrible and traumatic as the contemporary surgical methods. The surgeon and the Inquisitor differed only in their motivation: otherwise, their batteries of knives, saws, and tongs for slicing, piercing, burning, and amputating were barely distinguishable. Without any anesthetic other than strong liquor, an operation was as bad as the torments of hell.

~ Philip Ball

A man of forty-five can consider himself still young till the moment comes when he realises that he has children old enough to fall in love.

~ Giuseppe Tomasi Di Lampedusa

Give someone more time and they'll appear to have done more with it.

~ Kate Morton

One Must Always Remember That Birth, Old Age, Disease And Death Comes At Any Moment In Regardless Of Whom We Are Or What We Have In Forms Of Material Possession.

~ Baba Tunde Ojo-Olubiyo

I look into my glass,And view my wasting skin,And say, 'Would God it came to passMy heart had shrunk as thin!

~ Thomas Hardy

I'll be happy if running and I can grow old together.

~ Haruki Murakami

Moderation is the key to old age and the doorway to boredom

~ Benny Bellamacina

They rarely look at Baba -- the teenagers -- and then only with cold indifference, or even subtle disdain, as if my father should have known better than to allow old age and decay to happen to him.

~ Khaled Hosseini

Keep the enthusiasm of your youth and treasure the wisdom of old age.

~ Lailah Gifty Akita

was coming to that troubled twilight time, a time of regrets that resemble hopes, of hopes that resemble regrets, when youth is past but old age has not yet come.

~ Ivan Turgenev